The East German Leadership And The Division Of Germany

Author : Dirk Spilker
Publisher : Clarendon Press
ISBN 13 : 0191515825
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany written by Dirk Spilker and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2006-07-13 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Would it have been possible to build a unified and democratic Germany half a century before the fall of the Berlin Wall? This book reassesses this question by exploring Germany's division after the Second World War from the point of view of the SED, the communist-led and Soviet-sponsored ruling party of East Germany. Drawing on unpublished documents from the SED archives, Dr Spilker rejects claims that the East German comrades and their Soviet masters had abandoned their struggle for socialism and were willing to accept a democratic Germany in exchange for a pledge to neutrality. He argues that the communists' sudden switch to a multi-party approach at the end of the war was a tactical move inspired not by a desire for compromise but by the mistaken belief that they could win political hegemony - and the chance to introduce socialism throughout Germany - through the ballot box. Communist optimism, as this book shows, rested on specific assumptions about the situation after the war, all of which revolved around the prospect of political instability and social unrest in West Germany. The comrades in East Berlin did not just say that their regime would ultimately prevail, they genuinely believed it. Nor should their hopes be dismissed as a mere fantasy. In the aftermath of the war, the economic gap between the two Germanies was still relatively narrow and West Germany's future success as a magnet for the people in East Germany was by no means guaranteed.

Author : Christian F. Ostermann
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503607631
Total Pages : 566 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Between Containment and Rollback written by Christian F. Ostermann and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of World War II, American policymakers turned to the task of rebuilding Europe while keeping communism at bay. In Germany, formally divided since 1949,the United States prioritized the political, economic, and, eventually, military integration of the fledgling Federal Republic with the West. The extraordinary success story of forging this alliance has dominated our historical under-standing of the American-German relationship. Largely left out of the grand narrative of U.S.–German relations were most East Germans who found themselves caught under Soviet and then communist control by the post-1945 geo-political fallout of the war that Nazi Germany had launched. They were the ones who most dearly paid the price for the country's division. This book writes the East Germans—both leadership and general populace—back into that history as objects of American policy and as historical agents in their own right Based on recently declassified documents from American, Russian, and German archives, this book demonstrates that U.S. efforts from 1945 to 1953 went beyond building a prosperous democracy in western Germany and "containing" Soviet-Communist power to the east. Under the Truman and then the Eisenhower administrations, American policy also included efforts to undermine and "roll back" Soviet and German communist control in the eastern part of the country. This story sheds light on a dark-er side to the American Cold War in Germany: propaganda, covert operations, economic pressure, and psychological warfare. Christian F. Ostermann takes an international history approach, capturing Soviet and East German responses and actions, and drawing a rich and complex picture of the early East–West confrontation in the heart of Europe.

Author : Hope M. Harrison
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400840724
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Driving the Soviets up the Wall written by Hope M. Harrison and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War. For the first time, this path-breaking book tells the behind-the-scenes story of the communists' decision to build the Wall in 1961. Hope Harrison's use of archival sources from the former East German and Soviet regimes is unrivalled, and from these sources she builds a highly original and provocative argument: the East Germans pushed the reluctant Soviets into building the Berlin Wall. This fascinating work portrays the different approaches favored by the East Germans and the Soviets to stop the exodus of refugees to West Germany. In the wake of Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviets refused the East German request to close their border to West Berlin. The Kremlin rulers told the hard-line East German leaders to solve their refugee problem not by closing the border, but by alleviating their domestic and foreign problems. The book describes how, over the next seven years, the East German regime managed to resist Soviet pressures for liberalization and instead pressured the Soviets into allowing them to build the Berlin Wall. Driving the Soviets Up the Wall forces us to view this critical juncture in the Cold War in a different light. Harrison's work makes us rethink the nature of relations between countries of the Soviet bloc even at the height of the Cold War, while also contributing to ongoing debates over the capacity of weaker states to influence their stronger allies.

Author : Jonathan R. Zatlin
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521869560
Total Pages : 19 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Currency of Socialism written by Jonathan R. Zatlin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-03-05 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the East German attempt to create a perfect society by eliminating money and explains the reasons for its failure.

Author : Ernest D. Plock
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429714858
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book East German-west German Relations And The Fall Of The Gdr written by Ernest D. Plock and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates inner-German economic ties, travel contacts, and national consciousness that proved to be of greater consequence after Gorbachev's accession to power. It addresses the inevitability of the German Democratic Republic revolution and unification with the Federal Republic.

Author : G. Jonathan Greenwald
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271042850
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Berlin Witness written by G. Jonathan Greenwald and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a remarkable combination of personal reflections, official dispatches, and sophisticated political analysis, Berlin Witness recounts the dramatic story of the erosion of Communism in East Germany and the forging of the new Germany. Jonathan Greenwald arrived in East Berlin in the summer of 1987, when discontented East German youths were shouting &"Gorby, Gorby!&" on Unter den Linden and Erich Honecker was still received in Bonn as the respected leader of the Soviet Union's most powerful ally. Germany was divided, and Honecker's GDR was a cornerstone of the armed but apparently stable security order that grew up after the Second World War. As Political Counselor of the American Embassy, Greenwald expected to chronicle Europe's evolution away from East-West confrontation and to assess for the State Department the implications of strengthening ties between the two German states that were beginning to cause unease in the alliances of both superpowers. Instead, he found and described a revolution that climaxed with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and the unification of Germany. The daily entries, beginning with a traditional Communist May Day 1989 when time seemed to stand still, tell the story of that astonishing year from the unique perspective of a senior American diplomat. Greenwald had access not only to the leading personalities of the GDR, including Honecker, Egon Krenz, and Gregor Gysi, but also to the idealistic young people and churchmen who set in motion the events that astonished the world and changed all our lives. He participated in the often frustrating efforts to shape an American policy response to the accelerating crisis. In his Afterword, he offers insightful, and sometimes skeptical, observations about the rush to unification that has left Germany whole and free but racked by new tensions and self-doubts. Provocative and personal, Berlin Witness is likely to be the definitive American description of the first phase of the German Revolution until the government opens its archives in the next century and will be a valuable resource for anyone wishing to understand the background of the new Germany.

Author : Eugene K. Keefe
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book East Germany, a Country Study written by Eugene K. Keefe and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Peter Davies
Publisher : MHRA
ISBN 13 : 9781902653211
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Divided Loyalties written by Peter Davies and published by MHRA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study aims to shed light on the relationship of writers with power in East Germany by setting their work in the context of Soviet and SED German policy after 1945. Peter Davies provides an analysis of the politics of German division as it affected visions of German national identity within the East German artistic community, and shows how this can give us a profound insight into contentious questions of artistic `dissidence' and `conformity'. The second part of the study develops these ideas through a series of case studies of important individuals such as Johannes R. Becher, Peter Huchel, Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, analysing the complexities of their relationship with the power structures and ideology of the East German state in the institutional context of the Deutsche Akademie der Kunste. The study concludes with an account of the consequences of the June 1953 uprising for these artists' view of their role in the GDR.

Author : Kurt Sontheimer
Publisher : London : Hutchinson
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Government and Politics of East Germany written by Kurt Sontheimer and published by London : Hutchinson. This book was released on 1975 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Gareth Pritchard
Publisher : Manchester University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780719069819
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Making of the GDR, 1945-53 written by Gareth Pritchard and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2004-09-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Stalinisation of East Germany from 1945 to 1953 is analysed in this text, which is based on research in East German archives. It also tells the story of how the aspirations of antifascists and socialists were ultimately betrayed by Stalin.